Professor ‘had breasts fondled at parties’ by fellow academics

Academia is infected with a “hidden epidemic” of sexual misconduct, with some professors routinely targeting students, academics have claimed.

Female professors said that some vice-chancellors were among those who had reputations as sexual harassers.

Susan Bassnett said that she would not identify the culprits because she was a “child of the generation that took this kind of behaviour as par for the course”

Susan Bassnett, a professor of comparative literature at the University of Glasgow, said that she had suffered unwanted attention from “some very senior men, including a handful of vice-chancellors, professors and well-known writers, as well as others lower down the food chain”.

She said: “I have been pinned to walls, groped at parties, had my bottom pinched, breasts fondled, skirt lifted — sometimes with joviality, other times with the intensity of lust, fuelled by alcohol.

“One man was so infamous for his behaviour that when he crossed the room at drinks…

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